 Please join in a moment of centering silence. So we can be fully present with each other this morning. See how we sound as we sing the words to our ingathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Good morning everybody. Welcome to our Sunday service on Martin Luther King weekend as we celebrate the weekend as well as take an opportunity here at First Unitarian Society to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation and the proud owner of a new haircut. And I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. This is your first time at First Unitarian Society. I think you'll find that it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about what makes this place special, please join us for our fellowship hour right after the service. And during the service, we would appreciate it if you could silence those pesky electronic devices that you just won't need during the next hour. And while you're doing that, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that young companion would rather experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you, starting with our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your youngster can see and hear the service. And the reason that they can see and hear the service is that it's brought to us by a wonderful team of volunteers, and I'll read their names for you right now. Our lay minister is Lois Evenson. Our greeters upstairs with the smiling faces were Patty Whitty and Pamela McMullen. Our ushers to handle this unruly crowd are Tom Dolmage, Mary Savage, Brian Channis, and Chuck Evenson, and the all-important hospitality and coffee are hosted by Nancy Kossiff. So I invite you to sit back, lean forward, enjoy the warmth of our gathering today, and enjoy the service, which I know will touch your heart, stir your spirits, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. Come from the poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, her poem line. At the portal of the future full of madness, guilt, and gloom, stood the hateful form of slavery, crying, Give, O give me room. Room to smite the earth with cursing, room to scatter, rend, and slay. From the trembling mother's bosom, room to tear her child away. Room to trample on the manhood of the country far and wide. Room to spread, or every Eden, slavery scorching lava tide. Pailing trembling stood the future, quailing neath his frown of hate, as he grasped with bloody clutches the great keys of doom and fate. In his hand he held a banner all festooned with blood and tears, towards a fearful ensign woven with the grief and wrong of years. On his brow he wore a helmet decked with strange and cruel art. Every jewel was a life drop, wrung from some poor broken heart. Though her cheek was pale and anxious, yet with look and brow sublime, by the pale and trembling future stood the crisis of our time. And from many a throbbing bosom came the words in fear and gloom. Tell us, O thou coming crisis, what shall be this country's doom? Shall the wings of dark destruction brood and hover over our land, till we trace the steps of ruin by their blight from strand to strand? With the look and voice prophetic spake the solemn crisis then, I have only mapped the future for the airing sons of men. If ye strive for truth and justice, if ye battle for the right, ye shall lay your hands all strengthened on God's robe of love and light. But if ye trample on his children, to his ear will float each groan, jar the cords that bind them to him, and though vibrate at his throne. And the land that forges fetters binds the weak and poor in chains, must in blood or tears or sorrow wash away her guilty stains. And now have our lighting of the chalice if you can please rise and body your spirit and read with me the words of Martin Luther King. You'll read the bolded texts and I will read the non-bolded. We are caught in a web, an inescapable web, of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. There are some things in our social system to which all of us, all of us ought to be maladjusted. We must evolve for all human conflict, a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. And I'll invite you to turn in love to your neighbors in exchange of friendly greeting. Children of all ages, to come up for this story for all ages, we're not going to do the screen today. I just got one picture. We're going to use our imaginations. One not so weird picture. Whoa. So many. We're going to use something I like to call our sacred imaginations. Now sacred is a tough word, a word that we use here at church a lot, but it can be a little hard to say exactly what it means. Does anyone have any guesses? What does sacred mean? That's good. What do you got, bud? Was it you? You got an answer? What is it? Tell something to that other person, okay. One more. Do you want to say something? Okay. So for me sacred means when we come to a place that feels safe and we feel loved and we're able to be in that safe and loving place and it allows us to think about other people and to think about what the things that are special in our lives. So today I want to use our sacred imagination to try to imagine the story of Francis L. and Watkins Harper. She can pass this around if you want and take a look. So I want you to start by imagining this woman who is quite old in this picture as a little kid and so young all she can say is gah. On the day that Francis Helen was born her mother said, Francis Helen you are the most beautiful baby in the world with your curly brown hair and dark brown eyes and your soft brown skin because that's the kind of thing that mothers say. And Francis Helen said gah because that's the only thing that babies can say. So can you close your eyes if you want to and picture baby Francis? Now I want you to picture her a little bit older probably about the age of most of you kids here getting ready to start school. When Francis Helen was older she went to school. One of the teachers was her uncle William Watkins. He said to the class children you were very lucky to be here and to be allowed to learn. The children all nodded serious and quiet because even though they were only five and six years old they already knew. They knew that it was against the law for an enslaved person to learn how to read and write. They knew that most schools didn't let dark skilled children even free dark skilled children in. So I want you to imagine if it was against the law for you because of the way you looked to be allowed to learn how to read or write. And to imagine that they're just across just a few states away there was a place where you weren't even allowed to go to school at all. Someday William Watkins said someday all children will be allowed to learn black and white girl and boy. There will be schools for everyone someday. So Francis Helen learned she was really determined to learn how to especially she really enjoyed reading and writing. Does anyone here like to read? Does anyone here like to write? But even with chopping carrots so Francis Ellen she loved to learn how to write and but she also had a hard life where she had to do a lot of work. When she was 14 she left school and she got a job. She lived with the Quaker family and helped take care of their children she cooked and cleaned. Someday Francis Ellen said to herself as she hung up the laundry on the clothesline or chopped carrots or scrub floors. Someday children will be able to stay in school longer and learn all that they can someday. So can you think of a 14 year old that you know? They're not allowed to stop going to school and work all day. You got one? That's fine. So most teenagers get to just goof off all day, right? That's all they do. Not really, okay. But they don't usually spend their whole day chopping carrots and scrubbing floors. So I want you imagine being a teenager knowing that you're gonna have to go to work before you've even finished school, wouldn't be. But even with chopping carrots and scrubbing floors, Francis Ellen still found time to read. The Quaker family she lived with let her use their library because just like her uncle they believed that everyone should be allowed to learn. Francis Ellen found time to write too. She wrote stories and poems of her own. One of those stories was our opening reading today, the poem that I read. When she was 20, her book Autumn Leaves was published and sold in bookstores. A woman wrote this, some people said, a colored woman? No, that's impossible, it's too good. Someday Francis Ellen said as she dipped her pen into the inkwell to write another poem. Someday people will know that the work you do, doesn't depend on the color of your skin. People will know that both men and women can write. Someday. So I want you to imagine that you wrote something really awesome and no one wanted to read it because of who you were. And how would that make you feel? Would it make you wanna stop writing? That would be one way to do it. But someday it didn't look like it was coming anytime soon. So Francis Ellen decided rather than to quit she would help it along. She wrote poems and stories and sold over 10,000 books. And finally after more poems and more speeches after 15 years in a civil war that nearly ripped the country apart, slavery was made illegal in every part of the land and everyone was free. Francis Ellen, for her, her someday had finally come. But there was still a lot of work to do to make all those other some days happen. So Francis Ellen got to work. She traveled to the southern parts of the United States and helped start schools for all those people who hadn't been allowed to go to school before. She worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to change the laws so the woman would be allowed to vote just like men. She worked with different churches to feed the hungry and teach the children. Of all those churches, the one she chose to join was the first Unitarian church in Philadelphia. She became a Unitarian because she knew that Unitarians worked hard to make the world a better place and to make those some days come true. But there are still many some days that haven't arrived. So can I ask you all to commit to working together and help the children that still aren't able to go to school, help the people that are still hungry and do what you can to make the world a better place? Unitarian way? Okay, thanks. Have a good day in classes. This reading today comes from the letter from Birmingham Jail. I like to imagine this letter arriving in our mailbox. I'm not sure exactly how it was distributed after Martin Luther King wrote it. On the sides of the newspaper in Birmingham Jail, the only paper available to him. I like to imagine arriving in our mailbox and changing the way we thought about how we could participate in the movement of racial justice in America. There was a time when the church was very powerful and the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days, the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion. It was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early church entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being distribbers of the peace and outside agitators. But the Christians pressed on in the conviction that they were a colony of heaven called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. By their effort and example, they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is weak, an ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structures of the average community is consoled by the church's silence and often even vocal sanction of things as they are. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity. Forfeit the loyalty of millions and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning in the 20th century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust. Perhaps I have once again become too optimistic. If organized religion is too inextricably, is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have gone down the highways of the South on long, torturous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers, but they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountains of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned that we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries, our forebears labored in the country without wages. They made cotton king. They built homes for their masters, while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation. And yet out of a bottomless pit, out of a bottomless vitality, they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Our second reading, our second reading comes from the reverence, Teresa Soto and Megan Folly. I find that name. Megan Folly and Teresa Soto. I ask you to respond with all of us, need all of us to make it, which is the title of this piece when prompted. Unitarian Universalist minister, Reverend Teresa Soto writes, all of us need all of us to make it. I want you to get used to those words, make them your prayer. All of us need all of us to make it. This is why Unitarian Universalists support the Black Lives Matter movement. Please take a moment to center the struggle for Black Lives in your thoughts. Say it with me loud or soft. All of us need all of us to make it. In a world where some are targeted for struggle and brutality, where others of us benefit and flourish, we pray. All of us need all of us to make it. In a world where powerful people of ill will and indifference make us fearful for our safety and our futures, we pray. All of us need all of us to make it. In the excruciating space that lives between seeing and naming, hearing and changing, we pray. All of us need all of us to make it. Make a picture in your mind of someone you aren't very happy with right now. Look at their face in your mind and pray. All of us need all of us to make it. Unitarian Universalists believe that all of us need all of us to make it. This is why we are in solidarity with the movement for Black Lives today and every day. Amen. If you open your hymnals, you don't have to, you can if you want, if you open your hymnals to hymn 303, 308, 310, 378, 379, or readings 437, 443, or 444, you will see that the author of each is one Kenneth Patton who categorically refused the title of Reverend was the minister of First Unitarian Society for seven years, from 1942 to 1949. He saw this congregation through a good portion of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. He helped select for better or worse, Frank Lloyd Wright as the architect for the landmark auditorium. And he made sure that it would never be called a church or a chapel. He also chaired the committee that created the predecessor of our hymnal called hymns for the celebration of life, which is probably why so many of his words continue in our hymnal today. Now why am I talking about a dead white guy on MLK weekend? For better or worse, the common history of unitarian and universalist involvement in racial justice is the story of white men and a large and increasing number of white women responding to the prophetic voices of people of color, like Martin Luther King Jr. These white men and women were good people, even at times great people, with stories of risking more for the cause of social justice than most of us can imagine. Even like James Reeb and Viola Luizzo, sometimes giving their lives in the attempt to bring our world to a place of greater peace and justice. My question today is this. Is unitarian universalism a place where meaningful work for racial justice can truly be done on a significant scale? This isn't a rhetorical question. For you used today, both nationally and in this congregation, it has become an existential question. Rosemary Bray McNat recounts a conversation she had with Coretta Scott King, where King admitted that both she and her husband gave a lot of thought to becoming unitarian at one time, but Martin and I realized, Martin and I realized we could never build a mass movement of black people if we were unitarian. We are not solely a social justice organization, but neither are we solely a social club. Unlike many faiths, we claim no divine mandate for our work. We are not God's chosen people, God's kingdom on earth, or at least if we are, we do a really good job of hiding it. Our mission statement says that part of who we are is a people who seek to be a force for good in the world. If this seeking does not lead to meaningful action on perhaps the most pressing social issue of our day, we should seriously consider the state of our priorities. We, a white majority congregation, are constantly at risk of falling into the trap of the white moderate who became, from Martin Luther King Jr., a great stumbling block in this stride toward freedom of oppressed African-Americans, who prefer a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, resulting in moderates becoming dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. And Kenneth Patton certainly believed that this congregation to be a place where meaningful social action could be accomplished. In the then Unitarian pulpit, and in the universe pulpit, he would go on to occupy, Patton preached his most lasting message, we are one human family. And that human family should do away with the illusion of inherent racial difference as soon as possible. Race is a lie. A lie Patton taught meant to divide our family, destroying the common unity that is our birthright on this wondrous green and blue home of ours. He was, of course, right. Biology and anthropology tell us he was right. And more than that, I think our hearts tell us he is right. Race is an illusion. But he was also wrong, for race is the worst kind of harmful illusion. It is an illusion that we have made real. It is a lie that has become more real than the truth. When Patton stood at this pulpit, which was then in a YMCA, not this one specifically, but the first Unitarian pulpit, 70 years ago and formally resigned the white race, his most famous act, he was giving voice to a sentiment that many of us who are still white, who are white, still feel deeply today. We don't remember signing up to be white. And while we recognize that we have benefited significantly, significantly from being classified as such, we would give up quite a bit to live in a world where racial prejudice no longer exists. But we know that something as simple as publicly resigning from our race will never be sufficient to make for systemic change. Let me be clear, Patton made some serious waves with this declaration. I don't know how things went viral back then, but this declaration went viral. He got the kind of hate mail I can only dream of as a pastor. And to be fair to Patton, he had a plan to back up his declaration. He tried to give up his white privilege in such forms as marking colored on his bus pass, limiting his choice of seats on segregated lines. He told his parishioners that if they found the church resistant to admitting people of all races that they should leave and find a better church. But it is also clear that first Unitarian society never became the post-racial utopia that Patton hoped it would become. Critiquing the past is easy and cheap. And I know I am dangerously close to making Patton a straw man for our current failures. Setting our own vision for the future is much more difficult and much more urgent. Among the most influential reading of my time in seminary, which helped me to shape my future vision for this congregation and this denomination, was Sarah Kajawa Holbrook's research into multicultural congregations. She found that churches go through several consistent stages in their progress towards true inclusivity. The first stages are monocultural, where open and secret policies deny people of color access to our white congregations. We hopefully can say that we have moved on from those stages. I believe that leaders like Patton helped move this congregation into the multicultural third stage, where conscious discrimination is no longer tolerated and the goal of diversity is solidified in the church's aims. But where the congregation still remains unaware of continuing patterns of privilege, paternalism, and control. And I further believe that since the time of Kenneth Patton, our congregation has made significant steps towards moving towards the fourth stage of my racist organization. With growing understanding of racism as a barrier to effective diversity, a congregation that develops analysis of systemic racism and has an increasing commitment to dismantle racism and eliminate inherent white privilege. Of course, we still have work to do to even get to this stage, but I will admit that I have long been content to see this stage as the end goal. Early in the development of my call, my sense of call, I had made peace with the fact that Unitarian Universalism was a place where white folks got together to work on white people problems like privilege and structural racism. And if we did it good enough, then maybe some people of color would come and help. But sure, we weren't going to ever be racially diverse, but what denomination was. However, I was slowly converted to the idea that there is something beyond anti-racism. Right before I went to our denomination's General Assembly in June of 2017, where I was able to witness firsthand the grit and grace of the organizing work of people of color within our denomination. My understanding of what our denomination was and what it was meant to be imploded. And I began to glimpse over the distant horizon a different way of being. In learning to be white, the African American UU Minister, Tandeka, helped me to start to fill in a gap, a key gap in my understanding of my own racial identity, in a way that I have yet to experience. With a comprehensive and concise history of racial identity formation in the United States, Reverend Tandeka helps us to understand how white identity was crafted not just to justify control of non-whites, but to justify the control of powerful whites over disempowered whites. In order to break up natural class affiliations between white indentured servants and black slaves, the elites legislated white privileges for a class of persons they both despised and feared, ex-indentured servants. With a clear acknowledgement of the wages of whiteness, the social, financial, religious benefits that bring white grants, Tandeka broke into my heart by introducing the idea of the wages for whiteness. The price of admission to the white race in America has been exacting. Costs have included ethnic conflicts, class exploitation, police intimidation, humiliation by teachers, child abuse, lost self-esteem, and a general feeling of self-contempt. I, says Tandeka, call these costs the wages for whiteness. To tally them is to give the account of a racial victim. Someone who had to become white in order to survive, the story of this racial victim is rarely told. And just reading that paragraph makes me uncomfortable. One of the way white privilege works is to convince us that we can't hold both our responsibility for racism and our pain at living in a racist system at the same time. But the tree of racism is rotten through and through. I have become convinced that becoming the right kind of white people is among our greatest idols as white Unitarian Universalists. As we scramble for that part of the tree where the good white people are that don't have to worry so much about white guilt. Instead of focusing on dismantling the system of demanding wages of unquestioning loyalty for being white, we have simply constructed an alternative system of being good enough white people to be free from the costs of white guilt. It continually centers whiteness in our congregations, our policies, and our politics. We must learn and vastly stretch our concept of inclusivity. One of my brightest hopes is that the work of centering the voices of people of color in our denomination has begun. Its emerging throws have been both significant and painful as we begin to see through the diligent and direct work of view use of color how what too many of us appears to be a neutral is in fact institutionalized whiteness. I said earlier in this sermon that the UU history of racial justice is most commonly the story of white men and women responding to the work of people of color. That was an intentional half truth. In the book that I read for our story for all ages, each chapter on a notable unitarian universalist has a post script that starts with referencing where each person can be found within this education curriculum. UUs, like Thomas Starr King and Olympia Brown have multiple references. While Harper's post script begins with the incredibly sad words, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper is not featured in any UU curriculum. Our history does in fact include a large number of very significant and dedicated people of color whose stories are undertold and underappreciated. And I know that our congregation also contains the stories undertold and underappreciated of people of color. If you're here today, I'm grateful and I don't know why you chose to listen to the widest guy in Madison on MLK weekend. But I'm glad you're here and I'd love to hear your story. For at the same time, and as a sad truth that in its current state there is only room in our denomination for people of color with exceptional commitment and dedication. Compassion for the shared struggle against racism. And even then, their extraordinary story is almost never centered or remembered. As N.K. Jemisin has taught, equality is not making room for the exceptional but embracing the average. Plenty of white UUs can survive and thrive with an average amount of commitment. And that makes me happy. We are not a faith that should demand your entire life and energy to fill a worthy part of our community. But each UU of color that I have met has an extraordinary story of the struggle to find their place in our community. And that must become completely unacceptable. To have any hope to pass the insular, evenly focused stage of anti-racism, we must begin to stretch our sacred imagination. We can start by being radically inclusive of the diversity that is already among us. Part of that is listening deeply to groups like Black Lives Matter, Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism. But part of that is also the work that has been done by the Standing on the Side of Love campaign. That is confronted with the fact that standing is not possible for a significant portion of our congregation and our denomination. And in spite of concerted resistance has officially changed the name of their campaign to Siding with Love. Part of that work is considering how often inaccessible our own building is. And continuing to ensure that those that we make our building more accessible to those with differing levels of mobility. Ensuring that our services are accessible to those with different levels of hearing. And that we learn to include those with little discretionary time or funds in all levels of our community. The core skill set of Unitarian Universalists must be our ability to hold the tension between the reality of created different of created difference and the deeper truth of utter unity. We must learn to set down our best intention conception of us and them and at the same time learn to consistently confront the ways that us and them organizes a large proportion of our communal lives. Our Universalist spirit must continue to hold up the inviolable nature of the individual experience of racism and the pain that living in a racist system brings. We must acknowledge and move past not only our feelings of white guilt but also our white shame and our white fragility. We must hold ourselves to a strict measure of accountability at the same level that we are. We must hold ourselves to a measure of accountability at the same time we hold ourselves in a deep measure of compassion. There is no hope for us. There is no hope for us but the hope we create. Roxanne Gay, a Haitian-American writer quickly becoming one of the most important voices of our generation responded two days ago to the president's latest determined attempt to disperse the community. Disparaging once again people from countries which we have consistently and ruthlessly exploited for our own gain. This is a painful, uncomfortable moment, she writes. Instead of trying to get past this moment, we should sit with it. Wrap ourselves in sorrow, distress and humiliation of it. We need to sit with the discomfort of these career kids ears as shit holds during a meeting. A meeting that continued has comments unchallenged. No one is coming to save us. Before we can figure out how to save ourselves from this travesty we need to sit with that too. This is the moment we have created. The garden that has grown of seeds we have planted. White folks don't get to stop being white folks until black and brown folks get to stop being constantly policed and harassed for being black and brown. We organize this absurd we white people we organize this absurd disgraceful merry-go-round. We don't get to check out early just because we are starting to realize how awful it is. The only way out is together. Once again if you will join me with all of us need all of us to make it. In a world where some of us are targeted for struggle and brutality where others of us benefit and flourish we pray all of us need all of us to make it. In a world where powerful people avail will and indifference make us fearful for our safety and our futures we pray all of us need all of us to make it. In the excruciating space that lives between seeing and naming hearing and changing we pray all of us need all of us to make it. The only way out is together. Amen. Goes the NAACP our offering today goes the NAACP of Dane County. Please be generous. We gather each week to this time and place we bring our whole and at times our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek a place where they might be received be celebrated be shared. This book or one like it sits in front of our doors available for anyone who would like to share our joy or sorrow. And smiley shares her relief her son and daughter-in-law honeymoon in Hawaii are safe after the false missile alarm yet another concern that North Korea fear remains. Long time FUS member Nancy Dot passed away yesterday after six years of a struggle with a debilitating stroke memorial service has been tentatively scheduled for Saturday, March 3rd heartfelt condolences to her husband Bob and their five children. In addition to those mentioned we also acknowledge all those unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us and that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts. Let us now sit silently for a few moments in the spirit of empathy and hope. By virtue of our time together may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. We will now sing I left my my car down there like I do we will now sing the closing hymn 121 We'll Build a Land Our benediction comes from the river in Tandeka despair is my private pain born from what I have failed to say failed to do and failed to overcome be still my inner self let me rise to you let me reach down into your pain and soothe you I turn to you to renew my life I turned the world to the streets of the city the worn tapestries of brokerage firms crack dealers private estates personal things in the bag ladies cart rage and pain in the faces that turned from me afraid of their own inner worlds this common world I love anew as the lifeblood of generations who refuse to surrender their humanity in an inhumane world courses through my veins from within this world my despair is transformed to hope and I begin anew the legacy of caring blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude